Sniper Victims in Settlement With Gun Maker and Dealer

By FOX BUTTERFIELD

Published: September 10, 2004

The families of eight victims of the Washington-area snipers won a landmark $2.5 million settlement Wednesday from the manufacturer and the dealer who supplied the Bushmaster XM-15 rifle used in the 2002 shootings.

Under the terms of the settlement, Bushmaster Firearms Inc. of Windham, Me., the gun's maker, will pay $550,000 to the victims' families; Bull's Eye Shooter Supply of Tacoma, Wash., the gun dealer, will pay $2 million.

''We view the settlement as a major breakthrough because it is the first time that a gun manufacturer has paid damages for negligence leading to the criminal use of a gun,'' said Dennis A. Henigan, the legal director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Mr. Henigan was one of the lawyers representing the victims' families.

There have been other settlements of lawsuits against gun makers, but they were in cases where the gun was found to be defective, Mr. Henigan said, and not those in which the manufacturer failed to exercise care in making sure the dealer was not supplying the gun to criminals.

Kelly Corr, a lawyer for Bushmaster in Seattle, where the lawsuit was decided by mediation, emphasized that all the money owed by Bushmaster was being paid by its insurance company.

''The settlement also does not involve Bushmaster changing any of the ways it does business with its distributors and retailers,'' Mr. Corr said.

David Martin, a lawyer for Bull's Eye, said the settlement in no way constituted an admission of liability by the gun store.

''It was more of an economic decision,'' Mr. Martin said, given the number of plaintiffs and the seriousness of the injuries.

After the Bushmaster rifle was recovered from the car used by the snipers, John A. Muhammad and Lee Malvo, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced it to Bull's Eye. The owner of the store, Brian Borgelt, said he had not known the gun was missing, and the bureau discovered that Bull's Eye could not account for 238 guns that should have been in its inventory.

Mr. Malvo later told investigators that he had shoplifted the rifle. If true, Mr. Henigan said, that showed serious negligence by Bull's Eye, because the $1,600 rifle was three feet long and would have been hard to remove without someone in the store noticing.

The settlement with the families of six people who died and two who were injured in the sniper attacks was also important, Mr. Henigan said, because it was the third major settlement in the last 90 days against gun dealers for negligence leading to the criminal use of a gun. No previous such lawsuit had been successful in court.

Data compiled by the firearms agency has shown that a tiny handful of rogue dealers, about 1 percent, are responsible for almost 60 percent of the guns used in crimes. These are usually dealers who turn a blind eye to selling guns to gun traffickers or to so-called straw purchasers, people with no criminal record who buy a gun on behalf of someone who is prohibited from doing so because of a felony conviction.

Of the two other recent instances of gun dealers' settling cases, one involved a West Virginia pawnshop that sold guns to a straw purchaser; the guns were later used to shoot two New Jersey police officers. The other involved a Williamsport, Pa., gun store that sold a gun to a trafficker. The gun was eventually found under a car in Philadelphia by a boy who accidentally shot and killed his 10-year-old playmate.

In the case of Bull's Eye, the firearms bureau revoked Mr. Borgelt's firearms license in 2003, but not before he transferred it to a friend, who now operates the shop. Mr. Borgelt still owns the building and manages a pistol shooting range upstairs, said Mr. Martin, his lawyer.

Photo: Timothy Curtis of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in court last year displaying the Bushmaster used in the attacks. (Pool photo by Dave Ellis)